Geografia

Geografias da Comunicação:
espaço de observação
de mídia e de culturas
Organização
Sonia Virgínia Moreira
3

Coleção GPs da INTERCOM
Direção de Osvando J. de Morais
Vol. 1 – Comunicação e Esporte: Reflexões – Anderson Gurgel, Ary José Rocco Jr.,
José Carlos Marques e Márcio de Oliveira Guerra, orgs. (2012)
Vol. 2 – Políticas de Comunicação e Sociedade –
Valério Cruz Brittos e Ruy Sardinha Lopes, orgs. (2012)
Vol. 3 – Geografias da comunicação: espaço de observação de mídia e de culturas –
Sonia Virgínia Moreira, org. (2012)
DIRETORIA GERAL DA INTERCOM 2011 – 2014
Presidente - Antonio Carlos Hohlfeldt
Vice-Presidente - Marialva Carlos Barbosa
Diretor Editorial - Osvando J. de Morais
Diretor Financeiro - Fernando Ferreira de Almeida
Diretor Administrativo - José Carlos Marques
Diretora de Relações Internacionais -Sonia Virginia Moreira
Diretora Cultural - Rosa Maria Cardoso Dalla Costa
Diretora de Documentação - Nélia Rodrigues Del Bianco
Diretor de Projetos - Adolpho Carlos Françoso Queiroz
Diretora Científica - Raquel Paiva de Araújo Soares
Secretaria
Maria do Carmo Silva Barbosa
Genio Nascimento
Mariana Beltramini
Jovina Fonseca
Direção Editorial: Osvando J. de Morais (UNISO)
Presidência: Muniz Sodré ( UFRJ)
Conselho Editorial - Intercom
Alex Primo (UFRGS)
Alexandre Barbalho (UFCE)
Ana Sílvia Davi Lopes Médola (UNESP)
Christa Berger (UNISINOS)
Cicília M. Krohling Peruzzo (UMESP)
Erick Felinto (UERJ)
Etienne Samain (UNICAMP)
Giovandro Ferreira (UFBA)
José Manuel Rebelo (ISCTE, Portugal)
Jeronimo C. S. Braga (PUC-RS)
José Marques de Melo (UMESP)
Juremir Machado da Silva (PUCRS)
Luciano Arcella (Universidade
d’Aquila, Itália)
Luiz C. Martino (UnB)
Marcio Guerra (UFJF)
Margarida M. Krohling Kunsch (USP)
Maria Teresa Quiroz (Universidade de
Lima/Felafacs)
Marialva Barbosa (UFF)
Mohammed Elhajii (UFRJ)
Muniz Sodré (UFRJ)
Nélia R. Del Bianco (UnB)
Norval Baitelo (PUC-SP)
Olgária Chain Féres Matos (UNIFESP)
Osvando J. de Morais (UNISO)
Paulo B. C. Schettino (UNISO)
Pedro Russi Duarte (UnB)
Sandra Reimão (USP)
Sérgio Augusto Soares Mattos (UFRB)

Geografias da Comunicação:
espaço de observação
de mídia e de culturas
Organização
São Paulo
Intercom
2012

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Geografias da Comunicação: espaço de observação de mídia e de culturas
Copyright © 2012 dos autores dos textos, cedidos para esta edição à Sociedade
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Rafael Bezerra
Capa
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G345 Geografias da comunicação : espaço de observação de mídia e de
culturas / Organização, Sonia Virgínia Moreira. – São Paulo :
INTERCOM, 2012.
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humana – Livros eletrônicos. I. Moreira, Sonia Virgínia. II. Sociedade
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CDU 007:911.3(0.034.1)

Sumário
PREFÁCIO........................................................................................................................... 7
José Marques de Melo
APRESENTAÇÃO
Por que Geografias, no plural, para a Comunicação?..............................................................9
APORTES ESTRANGEIROS: GEOGRAFIA CULTURAL, ECONÔMICA E DE MÍDIA
Global, Hybrid or Multiple? Cultural Identities in the Age of Satellite TV and the Internet.......21
Joseph D. Straubhaar
Reconsidering Culture, Counterculture, and Nation through a Tropicália Lens.....................51
John R. Baldwin
Gestão e estratégias no mercado dos media em Portugal....................................................69
Paulo Faustino
PERCURSOS BRASILEIROS: TEORIA, TERRITÓRIO, MÍDIA E REGIÃO
Geografia das Comunicações: aportes brasileiros ao pensamento crítico.............................87
Análise da produção intelectual do Dr. Milton Santos e sua relação com a Comunicação...107
Paulo Celso da Silva
Estudo de condições para reconhecimento automático de entidades
geográficas em textos jornalísticos da língua portuguesa...................................................117
Margarethe Born Steinberger
Noticiário internacional: um mapa de contradições e influências ideológicas e econômicas.......129
Maria José Baldessar
O RJTV e a (re)urbanização do Rio: uma cartografia da violência
no discurso telejornalístico de pacificação.........................................................................143
Kleber Mendonça
Por um Telejornalismo Georregional...................................................................................159
Rodrigo Gabrioti de LIMA
Da Convivência à Convergência das Mídias: as Representações do Mundo na BBC Brasil.170
Jamile Dalpiaz
Diversidade cultural e apropriação de bens simbólicos na fronteira Brasil-Argentina.........187
Roberta Brandalise
Mapeamento da mídia fronteiriça em Mato Grosso do Sul..................................................203
Daniela Cristiane Ota
As agências transnacionais de notícias e os círculos descendentes de informações no
território brasileiro no período da globalização...................................................................214
André PASTI
Cartografia 2.0: Pensando o Mapeamento Participativo na Internet...................................228
Paulo Victor Barbosa de Sousa

7
Prefácio
Geografia e Comunicação são disciplinas dotadas de semelhanças,
mas que trilham caminhos distanciados. Por isso mesmo, estiveram se-
paradas durante tanto tempo. O que as aproxima? Fundamentalmente
o olhar cognitivo.
Enquanto a Geografia capta sinais produzidos pela natureza (rios,
caminhos, relevos), a Comunicação processa símbolos gerados pela socie-
dade (vozes, palavras, imagens). Uma parece estática ou cíclica, a outra se
mostra dinâmica, veloz. Mas são interdependentes. A Geografia precisa
da Comunicação para se fazer conhecer, difundir, atualizar; a Comuni-
cação não pode funcionar sem o suporte da Geografia para distribuir
conteúdos, provocar sensações, emocionar, surpreender.
Durante muitos anos, os estudos geográficos e as pesquisas comu-
nicacionais estiveram de costas, uns para os outros. Mas hoje não podem
mais ignorar-se. A Comunicação encurtou o mundo, reduzindo o espaço.
A Geografia acelerou o homem, escasseando o tempo. É temerário,
senão impossível, uma disciplina trabalhar sem mútua colaboração com
a parceira. Sem diálogo, metálica, arrogante.
Esta é a importante lição que nos transmite Sonia Virgínia Moreira
ao organizar e publicar esta coletânea. Evidencia notável maturidade
acadêmica. Ela reuniu um conjunto heterogêneo, mas rico e instigante,
de ensaios escritos por pensadores da Comunicação. Mesclou nativos e
forâneos. E ousou demonstrar que seus colegas e discípulos procuram
discernir na Geografia elementos confiáveis para ampliar horizontes in-
terpretativos. Metaforicamente, significa prato cheio. Fumegante, colori-
do, apetitoso. Suscita a gulodice dos comensais, pois fazia falta ao nosso
banquete bibliográfico.
Deixa o gosto de quero mais...
São Paulo, 1º de agosto de 2012.
Professor Emérito da Universidade de São Paulo e
Diretor da Cátedra UNESCO/UMESP de Comunicação

9
Por que Geografias, no plural, para a Comunicação?1
Sonia Virgínia Moreira2
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
soniavm@gmail.com
Por que Geografias? Porque a realidade é multifacetada, online, sem fronteiras e intercultural
– plural. Porque o acesso permanente ao canal aberto da Internet flui paralelo ao cotidiano da
vida de um número crescente de pessoas. Essas pessoas se movimentam em territórios di-
versos e, junto com elas, a mídia portátil está em todos os lugares constituindo e intermedian-
do fluxos: de informação, de conhecimento, de intercâmbios. Com a aceleração do tempo, o
espaço deixou de ser uma variável dependente e se transformou em fator determinante (Innis,
2008). A política, a economia, a sociologia, a antropologia e a história são disciplinas-âncora
dos estudos que se reúnem sob o guarda-chuva das geografias da comunicação – assim, no
plural, como manifestação precisa das suas múltiplas implicações.
Palavras-chaves: espaço; tempo; geografias; comunicação
Contextos
Na última sexta-feira de julho de 2012 um grupo de estudantes,
artistas e sindicalistas mexicanos ocupou por 24 horas o entorno da sede
da Televisa, no bairro de Chapultepec, na Cidade do México. O cerco hu-
mano às instalações da emissora foi convocado pelo coletivo #YoSoy1323
para mostrar o repúdio dos manifestantes, que consideraram tendenciosa
a cobertura dispensada pela empresa, favorável ao candidato do Partido
Revolucionário Institucional (PRI), Enrique Peña Nieto, vencedor das
eleições presidenciais. As 24 horas de ocupação, suas manifestações e ativi-
dades culturais, puderam ser acompanhadas ao vivo via Livestream, site por
meio do qual qualquer pessoa transmite imagens e áudio em tempo real.4
1 Paper apresentado no Grupo de Pesquisa Geografias da Comunicação. XII Encontro
dos Grupos de Pesquisas em Comunicação, evento integrante do XXXV Congresso Brasi-
leiro de Ciências da Comunicação – Fortaleza, CE
2 Professora associada do Departamento de Jornalismo e do Programa de Pós-graduação
em Comunicação da Faculdade de Comunicação Social da Universidade do Estado do Rio
de Janeiro. Bolsista de produtividade do CNPq.
3 Disponível em 28/Jul/2012 em: https://www.facebook.com/marchaYoSoy132
4 “Atrapa atención mundial toma simbólica de Televisa”. Processo.com.mx, 28 Julio 2012.
Disponível em http://ht.ly/cxYNC
“Students Blockade Mexican Television Studio to Protest Political Coverage”. The New
York Times, July 27, 2012. Disponível em http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/
mexicos-student-movement-protests-televisa/

GEOGRAFIAS DA COMUNICAÇÃO
10
Notícia local convertida em registro de abrangência global? Não,
apenas mais uma expressão da ecologia contemporânea de mídia, na qual
a audiência participa e se expressa no tempo e no espaço do fato, no
momento em que este ocorre. A novidade está na rapidez da resposta
(tempo), no expediente da convocação (redes sociais) e no alcance da
manifestação (espaço). O resto são elementos renovados desde as relações
mais antigas entre mídia e público no âmbito da indústria da comuni-
cação. Harold Innis localiza em 1500 a.C., na instalação da indústria do
papiro no Egito, o momento exato na linha do tempo da história que dá
partida no controle da indústria sobre o espaço por meio da melhoria dos
suportes de comunicação (Innis, 2008, p. 95).
A tríade formada pelos termos globalização, instantaneidade e loca-
lidade revela outro fenômeno em curso, aponta Ollivro (2011), que pode
ser explicado como uma nova economia de territórios:
A globalização significa o retorno da localidade, porque o encarecimento
da energia elétrica fará com que pessoas e objetos percorram percursos
limitados. Ainda que com exceções (pessoas ricas), a maioria dos indi-
víduos deverá reduzir seus deslocamentos a perímetros locais. Mesmo
que seja visível o crescimento das energias renováveis, o mundo ainda
depende da energia petrolífera, que representa 34% do consumo energé-
tico mundial, contra 25.5% do gás natural, 26.5% de carvão e 14% de
outras fontes de energias (metade delas nuclear). (...) Esta problemática
necessita de uma reflexão precisa sobre o conceito de distâncias, consi-
derando que as mesmas estão sendo amplamente reconfiguradas pelos
novos usos de da tecnologia: pela primeira vez na história, o mundo vai
dar origem a uma sociedade glocal (Citado, p. 14-19).
A manifestação no México reproduz em micro universo local-glo-
bal a relação entre pessoas e pessoas, entre pessoas e grupos, entre pessoas
e Estado e entre pessoas e ambientes (neste caso o de mídia e teleco-
municações). A história do grupo Televisa começou em 1930, quando
Don Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta realizou as primeiras transmissões da
rádio XEW nas ruas da Cidade do México, no antigo centro histórico
da capital. Em 1951, a emissora era "La Voz de la América Latina desde
México". A Televisa TV (Televisión via Satélite) nasceu em 1973 da fu-
são entre o Telesistema Mexicano (que reunia os canais de TV 2, 4 e 5,
de 1955) e a Televisión Independiente de México (propriedade de grupo
empresarial, de 1968).

11
SONIA VIRGÍNIA MOREIRA
Entre 1988 e 2001 a Televisa manteve um sistema pioneiro de no-
tícias em espanhol via satélite. A Empresa de Comunicaciones Orbitales
(ECO) transmitia ao vivo, 24 horas, para o México, os Estados Unidos,
as Américas Central e do Sul, a Europa Ocidental e o norte da África.
Emilio Azcárraga Jean está na presidência do Grupo desde 1997. Ele
comandou a negociação que em janeiro de 2012 derivou na parceria da
Televisa com a Lions Gate Entertainment Inc.5
, companhia independen-
te norte-americana de distribuição de filmes e séries de TV, para produzir
programas em inglês para TV aberta e por cabo6
. Este é um caminho que
os países de língua espanhola da América Latina começam a trilhar, cujo
processo vale o breve registro a seguir.
Além da experiência mexicana da Televisa, a Colômbia exportou
cerca de 30 produções de TV durante a década passada, principalmente
telenovelas, para mais de 80 países em todo o mundo, incluindo "Betty
la Fea".7
Na Argentina, a legislação aprovada em 19948
, mais a concessão
de fundos públicos para cineastas locais e o incentivo a coproduções com
outros países, permitiram que a indústria de cinema retomasse o ritmo
de décadas anteriores. O renascimento do cinema argentino foi alavanca-
do pela conquista do Oscar de Melhor Filme Estrangeiro por “El Secreto
de sus Ojos” e pelo início das transmissões de um canal público de TV
dedicado ao cinema nacional – a INCAA TV, do Instituto Nacional de
Cinema e Artes Visuais.9
No intervalo desses dois eventos em 2010, o
lançamento de 112 produções nacionais reforçaram os indicadores de
fortalecimento do setor.
Em 2012, no México, a gigante América Movil, do magnata
Carlos Slim Helu, anunciou o patrocínio de uma rede de web TV,
chamada Ora.tv, com sede em Nova York e direção de Jon Housman
5 Ver http://www.lionsgate.com/
6 SCHECHNER, Sam. Televisa expands in English TV. The Wall Street Journal, 25/
Jan/2012. Disponível em: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204624204
577181472663149292.html
7 “Film, television, advertising, and animation in Colombia”, Colombia Film Commis-
sion. Disponível em 20/Jul/2012 em http://locationcolombia.com/ingles/secciones/co-
lombia/colombia_audiovisual.html
8 LEY de Cine Argentina nº 24.377, 20.270 y 17.741. Fomento y regulación de la activi-
dad cinematográfica.
9 ROGERS-LOPEZ, Marc. “Argentina: Movie industry continues its rebirth”. Infosurhoy.com,
03/03/2011. Disponível em 17/Jun/2012 em http://infosurhoy.com/cocoon/saii/xhtml/en_GB/
features/saii/features/society/2011/03/03/feature-03

12
(ex-presidente de jornalismo digital da News Corporation), concebi-
da para o apresentador americano Larry King, ex-CNN. O plano da
Ora.tv é criar programas em vídeo para distribuição digital – e assim
a convergência dos meios se encaixa no discurso de Slim Helu como
parte do modelo de negócio do conglomerado mexicano plantado na
telefonia comercial:
“De modo geral posso dizer que o nosso trabalho é ser o transportador
(carrier) que fornece conexão e acesso aos nossos clientes. No começo da
telefonia, nos conectávamos a pessoas para conversar. ... Agora é vídeo.
Existem tantas aplicações e conteúdo surgindo que o nosso foco é tentar
dar para os nossos clientes o que eles gostam, quando eles quiserem, com
a melhor qualidade e o melhor preço. Este é o nosso foco. ... Algumas
aplicações são para uso comercial, para banco, mas também podem ser
usadas para a cultura. 10
As pistas que se revelam para o audiovisual latino-americano dão
conta das inter-relações e mediações no mapa regional da comunica-
ção no subcontinente ao mesmo tempo em que indicam perspectivas
de inserção da região na escala-mundo. Estabelecer as conexões entre
contextos nacionais, dados da indústria de mídia e referências culturais
ajuda a projetar o quadro maior das relações entre os diversos agentes
sociais. Essas projeções dimensionam o alvo de observação e análise,
que é o espaço da mídia e das telecomunicações em permanente atua-
lização e em processos de alargamento ou estreitamento de territórios.
Susan Crawford, professora visitante da Harvard Law School, alerta
para o fato de as telecomunicações, que em teoria deveriam nos unir,
na prática têm nos separado. Durante boa parte do século XX a exclu-
são digital se referia a quem possuía ou não telefone, mais tarde foi a
Internet e em seguida a banda larga:
10 DOLAN, K. A. “Carlos Slim Talks about Backdrop to New Internet TV Network Fea-
turing Larry King”. Forbes, 12/Mar/2012. Disponível em: http://www.forbes.com/sites/
kerryadolan/2012/03/12/carlos-slim-talks-about-the-backdrop-to-the-new-internet-tv-
-network-featuring-larry-king/
Original: “What I can tell you in general is that our work is to be the carrier that gives
connection and access to our customers. At the beginning in telephony, you connected
[people] to talk to each other. …. Now [it's] video. There are so many applications and
content coming that our focus is to try to support and … give our customers what they
like whenever they like it, in the best … quality and price. That’s our focus. Some [apps]
can be commercial, for banking, or [they] can be for culture”.

13
(...) em 1995, o Departamento de Comércio nos Estados Unidos publicou
sua primeira pesquisa sobre ‘exclusão digital’, na qual estão evidentes as lacu-
nas raciais, econômicas e geográficas entre aqueles que tinham acesso online
e os que não tinham. O maior problema ainda é a falta de competição no
mercado de TV por cabo. Grandes grupos dominam mercados locais, que
administram como reinados. E porque é tão caro instalar redes por meio de
cabos físicos, as empresas cuidam delas com ciúme, vinculando suas opera-
ções e desperdiçando milhões de dólares para fazer lobby contra as leis que
as obriguem a compartilhar suas infraestruturas (CRAWFORD, 2011)11
.
Castells (2011), por sua vez, ao examinar o poder na sociedade em
rede, observa que as teorias funcionam para contextos específicos; nunca
são gerais a ponto de dar conta de todos os contextos. Ele argumenta
que, no conjunto específico da sociedade global em rede, considerando
os recursos tecnológicos da microeletrônica e da tecnologia digital para
a comunicação, a organização em redes é basilar para a sociedade global,
assim como a distribuição de energia elétrica é a base do paradigma social
contemporâneo. As redes estariam, hoje, na origem das relações huma-
nas, fundadas e ancoradas na tecnologia:
Nosso contexto histórico é marcado pelo processo contemporâneo de
globalização e pelo surgimento da sociedade em rede, ambos dependen-
tes da comunicação para processar conhecimento e informação, base da
confiança, esta sim a fonte definitiva de poder (Castells, 2008, p. 16).
O sociólogo catalão distingue as análises de David Held (1991) sobre
a política e a economia na globalização que mostram como a teoria clássica
do poder, apoiada no conceito de Estado-nação e em estruturas subna-
cionais de governo, fica carente de um quadro de referência a partir do
momento em que elementos decisivos para a estrutura social se apresentam
simultaneamente como locais e globais e não como locais ou nacionais.
Nesse contexto, sugere Castells, “mais do que nos atermos às fronteiras
nacionais, precisamos identificar as redes sócio-espaciais de poder – local,
11 Original: “(…) in 1995 the Commerce Department published its first look at the “di-
gital divide,” finding stark racial, economic and geographic gaps between those who could
get online and those who could not. The bigger problem is the lack of competition in cable
markets. Though there are several large cable companies nationwide, each dominates its
own fragmented kingdom of local markets: Comcast is the only game in Philadelphia, whi-
le Time Warner dominates Cleveland. That is partly because it is so expensive to lay down
the physical cables, and companies, having paid for those networks, guard them jealously,
clustering their operations and spending tens of millions of dollars to lobby against laws
that might oblige them to share their infrastructure.”

14
nacional global – que, nas suas interseções, se configuram em sociedades”
(2008, p.18) e dão sustentação a pelo menos quatro tipologias para as dife-
rentes formas de poder exercido nas redes: o poder de construção de redes;
a rede do poder; a rede e o poder; as redes construindo o poder.
No bojo das estruturas de poder estão os processos de inclusão e de
exclusão. A economia global se interessa por incluir na sua rede sociedades
com alguma capacidade de consumo, ao mesmo tempo em que exclui
aquelas sem recursos. Outro exemplo: no mundo da academia global,
entre 200 e 300 universidades concentram hoje 85% do conhecimento
disseminado nas publicações indexadas em rede. Os incluídos produzem e
têm acesso a esse conhecimento, enquanto os excluídos experimentam as
restrições impostas pelo poder acadêmico-econômico-institucional. Ape-
sar dos constrangimentos implícitos aos processos de inclusão e exclusão,
cabe dizer que a comunicação digital em rede, a transmissão de conteúdo
produzido pelas empresas de mídia e a produção particular de conteúdos
escritos e audiovisuais constituem hoje espaços de observação múltiplos e
simultâneos, territórios prováveis para a circulação de uma cultura-mundo
resultante da mescla de conhecimento, informação e arte.
Indústrias
Lefebvre (1996), nas suas considerações sobre o espaço, se dete-
ve no exame do que constitui ‘o urbano’. Concluiu que o urbano é a
centralidade social, onde os vários elementos e aspectos do capitalismo
interagem em um espaço, ainda que este seja apenas parte de um lugar e
que dure um período breve, tal como pessoas ou mercadorias em trânsi-
to. A urbanidade seria, assim, representada pelos encontros e dispersões
simultâneas de mercadorias, informação e pessoas.
A cidade significa também o lugar por excelência da indústria de
comunicação, instalada e em interação permanente com o seu público
consumidor. As cidades midiáticas globais que surgiram na década de
1990 em alguns países significaram formas de representação do espa-
ço urbano como referência midiático-cultural, operando em diferentes
níveis geográficos. Nascem vinculadas à cultura urbana, incorporando
as características intermediárias entre os modos de vida rural e urbano;
mostram a diversidade de estilos de vida dos habitantes dos centros urba-
nos e criam ambientes de serviço e de entretenimento que atraem mode-

15
los diversos de desenvolvimento econômico. As principais características
das cidades midiáticas globais dizem respeito ao índice de produção, à
oferta de serviços e ao desenvolvimento de projetos de mídia para distri-
buição internacional. As cidades midiáticas globais abrangem a indústria
midiática como um todo, desde impressos e produtos audiovisuais até
editoras e mídia digital on-line, entre outras (MOREIRA, 2010).
Além dos vínculos entre cidade e mídia explicitados nas cidades mi-
diáticas globais, uma relação de outra natureza (no domínio da proprieda-
de dos meios de comunicação) pode ser considerada: a mídia pública como
integrante da indústria de mídia e telecomunicações. A linha que separa
os conceitos reciprocamente excludentes de público e privado assumiu
fronteiras diversas ao longo da história e ainda hoje se movimenta. A apli-
cação desses conceitos no contexto da radiodifusão pública nos países da
América do Sul12
, por exemplo, realça três situações: a predominância da
iniciativa privada no setor; a frequente configuração da radiodifusão estatal
como ‘pública’; e o investimento recente no fortalecimento de sistemas e/
ou canais identificados como públicos (antes eram emissoras estatais e edu-
cativo-culturais) como parte de estratégia contra-hegemônica destinada a
dar ‘voz’ para aqueles que não têm espaço no ambiente comunicacional
marcado pelo predomínio dos conglomerados de mídia.
Importante lembrar aqui que a distribuição do espectro radioelé-
trico, do qual faz uso e depende o serviço de radiodifusão em cada país,
é gerido em nível global pela União Internacional de Telecomunicações
(UIT). Internamente, cada nação tem soberania para administrar o uso
desse recurso natural. Na Conferência de Plenipotenciários, em 1932
em Madrid, a UIT estabeleceu o princípio da “nacionalidade de toda
emissão”, segundo o qual nenhuma emissora pode ser criada ou operada
por particulares ou empresas sem licença especial do governo de um país.
Essa exigência permitiu configurações jurídicas diferentes em contextos
administrativos distintos, mas o princípio da nacionalidade exigiu dos
países a fixação do Estado como detentor das concessões públicas de fre-
quências para rádio e televisão, o que gerou a obrigatoriedade de ato
jurídico-público de outorga ou determinação para que qualquer pessoa
ou grupo tenha acesso às frequências radioelétricas (SAIZ, 2007).
12 Objeto de pesquisa em andamento no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação
da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (2010-2013).

16
O fato é que os modelos público e privado da indústria de mídia
e de telecomunicações têm guiado o uso das tecnologias e o nascimento
de outras culturas de comunicação. Enquanto o Estado regula o setor
de mídia e de telecomunicações (e também as suas próprias empresas),
companhias agregadas a conglomerados absorvem, distribuem e alugam
o uso dos dispositivos de conexão em rede aperfeiçoados pela tecnologia.
Assim, a escala de mercado da comunicação (a distância) em rede é local
e global – e a participação de países ou continentes nessas redes varia de
acordo com o grau de acesso e de consumo nacional, como já vimos.
Geografias, portanto, porque...
A realidade é multifacetada, online, sem fronteiras e intercultural –
plural. Porque o acesso permanente ao canal aberto da Internet flui paralelo
ao cotidiano da vida de um número crescente de pessoas. Essas pessoas se
movimentam em territórios diversos e, junto com elas, a mídia portátil está
em todos os lugares constituindo e intermediando fluxos: de informação,
de conhecimento, de intercâmbios. Com a aceleração do tempo, o espaço
deixou de ser uma variável dependente e se transformou em fator determi-
nante (Innis, 2008). A indústria de mídia e telecomunicações esquadrinha
formas de controle do espaço, que se configuram nos conglomerados. O
Estado ajusta as regras para o uso do espaço, como ente regulador e con-
cessor de licenças para exploração de territórios, e grupos de pessoas criam
comunidades que interagem em fluxos paralelos. As geografias da comuni-
cação tratam desse contexto: privilegiam o espaço (e, nele, os fluxos infor-
mativos e as mediações tecnológicas) como campo de observação das inte-
rações reais e simbólicas entre pessoas e pessoas, entre pessoas e indústrias,
entre pessoas e Estados, entre pessoas e ambientes. A política, a economia,
a sociologia, a antropologia e a história são disciplinas-âncora dos estudos
reunidos sob o guarda-chuva das geografias da comunicação – assim, no
plural, como manifestação precisa das suas múltiplas implicações.
A observação dos sistemas de mídia e de telecomunicações é de-
terminante para a análise das várias camadas de contextos – geográfico,
midiático cultural, econômico, político, identitário – que compõem o
processo contemporâneo da comunicação. O campo das geografias da
comunicação se ocupa dos fluxos que movem os interesses do público,
do Estado e das corporações. Nesse sentido, sua configuração demandará
sempre estudos que sejam plurais, interdisciplinares e cooperativos.

17
Referências bibliográficas
BARBERO, Jesús Martín. Políticas de la comunicación y la cultura: Claves de la
investigación. Barcelona: Dinámicas Interculturales n.11, 2008.
CASTELLS, Manuel. Communication Power. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
CRAWFORD, Susan. The New Digital Divide. The New York Times,
12/03/2011.
INNIS, Harold A. The Bias of Communication. 2nd
edition. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2008.
LEFEBVRE, Henri. Writings on Cities. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996.
MOREIRA, Sonia V. Cidades midiáticas globais [verbete]. Enciclopédia Intercom
de Comunicação (vol. 1). São Paulo: Intercom, 2010, p. 181-182.
OLLIVRO, Jean. La Nouvelle économie des territoires. Rennes: Éditions Apogée,
2011.
SAIZ, David C. El espectro radioeléctrico. Una perspectiva multidisciplinar (I): Pre-
senteyordenaciónjurídicadelespectroradioeléctrico.NotíciasJurídicas,set.2007.Dis-
ponível em10/jan/2012 em: <http://noticias.juridicas.com/articulos/15Derecho%20
Administrativo/200709-25638998711254235235.html>.

Aportes estrangeiros: geografia
cultural, econômica e de mídia

21
Global, Hybrid or Multiple? Cultural Identities
in the Age of Satellite TV and the Internet1
Joseph D. Straubhaar2
University of Texas at Austin
jdstraubhaar@austin.utexas.edu
This paper explores the multiplicity of levels of media use and identity as a key element of the
changing cultural geography of globalization. The movement from traditional local life to mo-
dern interaction with mass media has produced identities that are already multilayered with
cultural geographic elements that are local, regional, transnational based on cultural-linguistic
regions, and national (Anderson, 1983). Both traditional and new media users around the
world continue to strongly reflect these layers or aspects of identity while many also acquire
new layers of identity that are transnational, or global. We also examine the relationship be-
tween processes of hybridization of identity and culture over time and the buildup, maintenan-
ce, and defense of multilayered identities.
Keywords: media use, identity, cultural geography of globalization.
Globalization-impacts of satellite TV and the Internet
There is a strong presumption by many that first satellite TV in the
1990s and now the Internet in the new millennium has begun to strongly
globalize people’s identities. However, many questions lurk behind this
surface of apparent change. What is truly easily available to people, not
only in physical access, but also in terms of effective access to understand
or enjoy? How many new information and entertainment sources are truly
global, versus transnational, national, regional and local? What are people
actually choosing to read and watch amongst all these new options?
What structural, economic, cultural and other factors guide people’s
choices as they choose among all the new possibilities? What is the role of cul-
tural history, language and proximity? What has been shared historically and
what is coming to be shared now, in part through the new media themselves?
What impacts do global media have compared to national, regional or other
1 Trabalho apresentado no GP Geografias da Comunicação, IX Encontro dos Grupos de
Pesquisas em Comunicação, evento componente do XXXII Congresso Brasileiro de Ciências
da Comunicação. Curitiba, 2009.
2 Graduate Adviser, Amon G. Carter Sr., Centennial Professor of Communication. University
of Texas at Austin.

22
media have upon culture? In a larger sense, what impacts do today’s global
media have on people’s identities and how should we understand both those
impacts and the identities themselves in this new world? And what impacts
to all of these phenomena and have on the structuring of cultural spaces and
markets in at local, national, regional and global levels?
The movement from traditional local life to modern interaction with
mass media has produced identities that are already multilayered with cul-
tural geographic elements that are local, regional (subnational but larger than
the very local), transnational based on cultural-linguistic regions, and national
(Anderson, 1983). In this study, we argue that new media users around the
world continue to strongly reflect these layers or aspects of identity while many
also acquire new layers of identity that are transnational, or global. In this pa-
per, we examine the relationship between processes of hybridization of iden-
tity and culture over time and the buildup, maintenance, and even defense of
various layers of multilayered identities.These layers of identity are articulated
with a variety of media, such as television and the Internet, but not in a simple
sense of being primarily influenced by media. Some layers of identity, such as
those religious traditionalists hold, may actively resist many of the ideas most
television channels and Internet sites and messages carry.
These increasingly multilayered identities are articulated with a vari-
ety of changing structures. As we shall see below, social class and geography
strongly structures who can access what new channels. Further, the media
institutions themselves are becoming more complexly multilayered, even as
they reach further geographically. Models, such as commercial TV networks
globalize, but are also localized and regionalized as they engage the specific
histories and institutions of a variety of cultures, media traditions and regu-
latory systems. Because of these kinds of adaptations and localizations, an-
other notable theoretical strand we shall use here is hybridity. In our model,
hybridity and multi-layeredness coexist and interact. Layers like the insti-
tutions, program genres, and audience identities for public service co-exist
with layers for commercial networks, genres and audiences. Both can acquire
and maintain substantial solidity, but both are also changing, in part as they
interact with and change each other. One case, we will consider below, the
global expansion of Discovery and similar networks, takes documentary and
other genres from public service television and hybridizes them, or as many
would say, waters them down, into a new global commercial form.

23
JOSEPH D. STRAUBHAAR
Cultural sedimentation: layers and mixtures/hybrids
In my own work, particularly a number of in-depth interviews
within Brazil, and from Austin to the Texas border with Mexico, I find a
process of hybridity as well as a process of the formation, maintenance,
occasional collapse, and recent proliferation of multiple layers of identity
and corresponding layers of media use. I articulate this is as dual process.
As an observer in Brazil, for instance, I perceive cultural hybridity tak-
ing place in a certain situation. However, I rarely interview people who
see themselves as culturally hybrid. On the other hand, I frequently find
myself interviewing people who articulate their identity as a series of
spaces or layers. In both Brazil and Texas, I find people who articulate
very clearly a local sense of self, a regional sense of self, a national sense
of self, some interest or knowledge of the global, a social class sense of
self, a religious sense of self, an ethnic and/or linguistic sense of self, a
professional, and an educational sense of self.
So in my work, I’m moving toward what we might see as a kind
of sedimentary model in which layers of meaning, culture, identity, and
media use form and persist. New layers form over the top of all oth-
ers as structural circumstances permit or even dictate. Sometimes when
we look at people, for instance, we are likely to see the newest layer as
strongest. For many observers when they look at culture these days, they
see on top a new layer of what they might call globalization. So seeing
this as a new layer, there is a supposition that this is perhaps now the
dominant layer, perhaps homogenizing all the others. Or perhaps even
the dominant aspect of someone’s identity or experience. However, if
we were looking at a highway cut or a river canyon someplace, we see
the layers from the side. We realize that there are recent layers, which are
important, but they’ve built up over older layers.
One problem with the geological analogy for this is that it seems
to imply that the layers persist as separate. But as in geology, the layers
often interact. They sometimes break down and form new layers out of
the pre-existing ones. Even more in culture, I think we will see that these
layers interact with each other so that as one becomes globalized a certain
part of one’s life, such as one’s education or profession, one finds that
inevitably in dialogue with ones local interests, musical preferences, or
even religious or philosophical interests. One could have a rich metaphor

24
to work with for the ongoing nature of change. Too many systems either
overstate change, as in the very strong cultural imperialism hypothesis,
or in contrast, understate change, as in some globalization hypotheses
in which everything forms separate pockets and simply persists. I don’t
think any of those are quite adequate for understanding the complexity
of what we see as people do use new forms of media to interact, form-
ing new layers and levels of identity. But they continue also to think in
terms of older layers of identity, interest and media use, as well.
Multiple media spaces of production, flow, identification
In this paper, I would like to more clearly articulate a map of some of the
different forms and layers of interaction that are frequently put together under
the idea of globalization. I want to define some of those layers more narrowly
and carefully. At the same time, I would like to map out, as a heuristic begin-
ning, the kinds of layers of production, flow and identity that I see emerging.
These are based in varying combinations of cultural geography,
institutional strategies and alliances, and genre. Cult geo based in cult
definitions of markets and spaces for production, flow and consumption.
Institutional power defined by geography, but also redefining geography,
offering new cultural products to identify with. Some of this map comes
from examining the production process, some from extensive mapping
I have recently done of television flows (Straubhaar, 2007), and much
comes from interviews with a variety of audience members in Brazil and
Texas conducted by me and my students at UT. Following is a map, or
typology of layers from the most global down to the local.
• Global infrastructures of technology, finance and media models that struc-
ture more specific layers of production, flow and identification below.
• A U.S. “empire” based on Hollywood structural & cultural power, it-
self becoming a transnational network of co-production (Miller, et al).
• Global genre producers and co-producers, focused on highly global-
ized genres like travel, nature.
»» Global format producers and exporters/co-producers, such as
Endemol, based in a few major locations, Holland, United King-
dom, USA and Australia.
»» Other global exporters – Latin American producers of telenove-
las, Japanese anime, Bollywood, etc.

25
• Transnational cultural-linguistic producers, markets and audiences
– geographically separated former colonies and diasporic migrants,
English, French, and Portuguese-speaking.
• Geo-cultural regional producers, markets and audiences – geograph-
ically linked cultures with common or similar languages, shared his-
tories, and geographic proximity, like the Nordic countries, the Arab
World, Greater China, and Latin America.
»» Translocal producers, markets and audiences – cross borders into India
from Hong Kong, into the USA from Mexico, etc. (Kumar, et al).
»» National producers, markets and audiences – of enormous va-
riety, from powerful states like China, which push Rupert Mur-
doch around, to failed states like Somalia.
»» Regional producers, markets and audiences – smaller than states,
perhaps lapping across borders, like the cultural region and bor-
der zone between Monterrey, Mexico to Austin, Texas.
»» Metropolitan producers, markets and audiences – global cities
or media capitals (Curtin), which are directly linked to global
networks, and produce for themselves, regions, nations or trans-
national spaces.
»» Local producers, markets and audiences – at the level of the
smaller city, municipality or even neighborhood.
The importance of cultural geography
If we examine this list of layered producers, markets and audi-
ences more carefully, we can see historical and geographic patterns of
development that put global developments into a more nuanced per-
spective. We are beginning to recognize that markets and services are
not simply or clearly defined by technology, or by corporate ambition,
but also by culture, uses, and identities and how they layer over time.
Many of these culturally defined markets and identity reflect pre-global
layers of culture. These include many of the most powerful layers of
both media and identity.
The dominant cultural forces for most people seem to have been
originally local and regional. People thought of themselves primarily in
terms of villages, local dialects, perhaps tribes or clans. It took well into
the 1700s for most Frenchmen to speak French in one of the earliest na-

26
tions to be defined as such (Weber 1976). Now, based on my interviews
in Brazil, even the most globe-hopping businessman or academic usually
still has a very local identity as well. A neighborhood they live in, other
neighborhoods they go to for work or pleasure. They prize local res-
taurants, music clubs and scenes, nightclubs, museums, bookstores, all
the many places that in a very physical and spatial sense tend to give life
local context and local pleasure. These are linked to personal networks,
but in media terms, also local music scenes, local radio, local newspapers,
festivals, and performances.
For many people, there are regional layers of identity and re-
gional layers of media, which are smaller than the nation, but larger
than the very local. Many of these regional foci depend on language
variation. Very important cultural and linguistic regions from Cata-
lans in Spain to the Kurds to Mayan language speakers in southern
Mexico to a variety of regional language groups in India still have
strong layers of quite separate identities from the nation states that
contain them. They also often have ethnic, cultural, and religious
differences with national majority populations. They usually have
their own music traditions and scenes (O’Connor 2002), and his-
tories, which are often intense focuses of identification. Sometimes
hundreds of millions in very large nations like India speak local or
regional languages linked to regional cultures, film industries, broad-
casters, etc.
In many ways these regional groups below the nation state are
based on cultural linguistic groups that predate the nation state in very
real and effective ways. The USA, for instance, is spending tens of bil-
lions of dollars time trying to prop up a nation state in Iraq, echoing the
British efforts to create such a state earlier in the 20th century. However,
the likely fate of Iraq is to disintegrate into the three pieces in which
it existed in under the Ottoman Empire (LOC 2007): a Kurdish area,
Sunni Arab area based in around the capital city, and a largely Shiite
area in the south. So these old ethnic groups, languages, empires, and
religions have a great deal to do with major layers of identity that many
of us hold very tight and important.
Another strong set of pre-national and pre-global cultural forces
are what I call geo-cultural, based on cultural-linguistic groups that

27
precede the European colonization of the late 1400s on. These are
based on older ethnic groups, languages, empires, and religions, in
places like the Nordic countries, Greater China, Arab World, and
South Asia. Some cultural forces and identities that remain very pow-
erful date from before most nation-states, from colonial empires, mi-
grations, languages, religions, and racial mixtures, in Latin America,
Franco- and Luso-phone Africa, in the USA, and other Anglophone
nations, such as Australia or Canada (Abram 2004). In some ways,
many of the cultural roots of Nordicom date from the common,
pre-national roots of Nordic cultures. Scandinavia has a certain geo-
graphical coherence and contiguity, as well as shared historical, cul-
tural linguistic, ethnic, dynastic or political, and religious roots, of
geo-linguistic (Sinclair 1999) or geo-cultural layers of understanding
and identification (Straubhaar 2005).
I have several times attended the meetings of another academic
group, based on common language and culture, very different than Nor-
dicom, the Association of Portuguese speaking media researchers (Lu-
socom), from Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, along with
much smaller places like East Timor. There can be meaningful associa-
tions widely spread geographically but linked by language, culture and
history, colonial experience, and now academic interaction that build
common literatures, etc. They are more far-flung geographically far-
flung groupings such as the Portuguese speaking world or the English-
speaking world. I distinguish them from the geo-cultural by calling them
cultural linguistic transnational spaces.
While the roots of these geo-cultural and transitional cultural lin-
guistic layers of culture predated both the nation-state and globalization,
they were reinforced by many of the new forces, particularly in technol-
ogy and economics that we associate with globalization. Just as we see
growth in parts of the Hollywood coverage of the world, we see often
rapid growth in cultural linguistic and geocultural spaces and markets in
television exports (Straubhaar, 2007), satellite/cable TV, Internet sites,
music and movie downloads.
However, many if not most people who’ve lived in the last two
centuries have interacted with modern national educational systems in
which textbooks and teaching norms are discussed and prescribed at a

28
national level. They have also grown up with national media, whether
commercial or the kinds of public broadcasting systems common in
northern Europe at the national level. They often deal with other nation-
alizing forces, national churches in some cases, national labor unions,
national sport teams, and all the things that in many ways are articulated
with a certain sense of nationalism.
National cultural forces (Anderson, 1983) are linked to novels, na-
tional newspapers, national radio and television, and in some cases to
national film and music. Anderson shows those national cultures and
national media are not a given and they are slowly and often carefully
constructed over time. Sometimes cultural elements have been delib-
erately used by governments, or national romantic artists to reinforce
national identity, such as the 1800s use of Kalevala runot in Finland, or
the 1890s use of Snorri Sturluson’s Sagas of the Norse Kings to help cre-
ate modern Norwegian identity, or the 1930s to present use of music in
Brazil to define national identity.
New global layers of cultural identification
Audiences around the world also acquire new layers of identity
or identification corresponding to new global layers of production and
flow of media, enabled by new structural forms of political economy,
and new forms and models of media. Forming one of the main new
global layers, Hollywood dominated the flow of film to most world
markets (Miller 2001) and at least initially dominated the flow of tele-
vision, as well (Nordenstreng and Varis 1974). So by sheer dint of ex-
posure, American culture began to seem as a familiar second culture
to many people (Gitlin 2001), particularly in Western Europe and the
Anglophone countries where the U.S. presence was often most notable
(Straubhaar 2007). It was linked over the years, to film, television ex-
ports, satellite/cable TV channels, and music, part of what a recent turn
in political economy research calls a new sort of virtual empire by the
USA (Hardt and NEGRI 2001). However, many people around the
world were more lightly touched by this U.S. layer than others, depend-
ing on location, social class, language, religion, and other aspects of
identity that led them to discount the U.S. output and choose to watch
other things (Hoskins and Mirus l988).

29
There are also renewed and expanded transnational layers, as noted
above, at both cultural-linguistic and geocultural levels that utilize many
of the same technologies as do U.S. and other global productions and
flows. Books have flowed among language and religious groups for mil-
lennia. The Bible and Koran helped expand large areas of shared reli-
gious identification and at least in the case of the Koran, considerable
Arabic language hegemony as well in the Mid-East and North Africa.
Mass media like radio, cinema and television helped consolidate and
renew language and cultural groupings. Since the mid-1990s, research
by Sinclair and others (1996) have highlighted the growing importance
of cultural linguistic markets. Research on the role of satellite TV in the
Arab World (Kraidy 2002) shows how new refinements in technology
can continue to facilitate and reinforce such identities.
At least in television, the U.S. and new transnational flows are heavi-
er, but there are also new layers of other global production and flow or ac-
cess, such as the worldwide flows of Latin American telenovelas, Japanese
anime on film and television, Hong Kong kung fu film and television,
and Bollywood films, among others. The scope of these flows, especially
compared to Hollywood exports, has been contested (Biltereyst and Meers
2000) but they have grown into visible new options for those who have
access to them. We can also see some new global flows of news (with new
operations like Al-Jazeera in English), feature films (especially those co-
produced with Hollywood), music, and some Internet sites, like YouTube.
There are new forms that seemed to be global in ways that we’ve perhaps
not yet thought how to articulate, such as the way young people in many
countries now interact in English via technologies like massive multiple
online role playing games like World of Warcraft.
Global stratification of new media access and use
Next, perhaps, to consider is that the world of global media, partic-
ularly the new media, is a very stratified place. Many people do not have
access to the new tools and channels that carry some of the layers de-
scribed above. Even though we are speaking today in Scandinavia, where
Internet access and multi-channel TV access is as high as anywhere in the
world, many places exist, particularly in Africa and South Asia, where ac-
cess to even simple broadcast TV and radio is still quite limited.

30
In some ways people in North America and in Scandinavia live in
what Mattelart (2002) has described as a global archipelago or a ‘techno-
apartheid’ global economy (p. 607) of those included in the information
rich global economy, concentrated in the rich countries of the European
Union, North America, Australia/New Zealand, and parts of East Asia,
but in which almost 80 percent of the world’s population is excluded
(Mattelart, 2002, p. 608). That global archipelago of high incomes and
connectivity tends to have very high Internet, satellite, cable TV, ad-
vanced mobile phone, and other new media access and use. This archi-
pelago is, in some ways, a unique place where people find it easier to
pursue global topics, whether it is on numerous forms of television, the
Internet, audio accessed through the Internet, mobile devices, or other
channels. Its infrastructure is now in many ways beginning to converge
together on the Internet. Most people in it have both physical access
to an Internet connection and the education, cultural capital and social
capital that enables them to use it skillfully for their own interests. Ma-
jorities of users in at least the major urban parts of this archipelago have
access to broadband Internet.
Broadband penetration is a good indicator of the broad outlines of
the archipelago of the highly connected. An International Telecommuni-
cation Report gives the broad outlines (ITU 2007, p. 9):
Today, however, broadband penetration is dominated by the wealthy
countries. Some 70 per cent, or nearly three-quarters, of broadband
subscribers worldwide in 2006, were located in high-income countries
which accounted for just 16 per cent of world population. Furthermore,
two economies – India and Vietnam – accounted for more than 95 per
cent of all broadband subscribers in low-income countries, while a single
economy – China – accounted for 94 per cent of broadband subscribers
in the lower-middle income group (Figure 1.2). The good news is that a
number of developing countries are experiencing broadband growth. In
Peru, for example, the number of broadband subscribers has grown by
close to 80 per cent annually between 2001 and 2006, from 22’779 in
2001 to 484’899 at the end of 2006. In Europe, over half the Estonian
population uses the Internet and the country has the highest penetra-
tion of both Internet and broadband in Central and Eastern Europe.
But in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), there were merely 46’000
broadband subscribers in the 22 out of 50 LDCs with broadband service
in 2006. (ITU, 2007, p. 9)

31
However, even within nations considered to be part of the global
high tech archipelago, people with less education have lower access and
less profitable usage of their connectivity (Mattelart, 2002). People who
live in rural areas or people who simply do not possess the cultural capi-
tal or group habitus, in the terms framed by Pierre Bourdieu (1984),
do not necessarily have the interest, wherewithal or ability to follow the
same patterns as even their urban or more educated compatriots within
the archipelago. The Pew Internet studies in the USA have noted that
a number of people do not know enough to use the Internet enjoyably
and others perceive it as outside their interests and personal repertoires
of entertainment and information.
Outside the global archipelago, there is another new model to the
world’s connectivity. Many of the larger developing countries, such as
Brazil, Russia India and China, and other large-scale developing coun-
tries are heavily pursued by many of the ICT equipment and content
marketers of the world because they have large numbers of Internet and
satellite TV users. But they are internally stratified. For example, while
perhaps 5-10% of Brazil uses the Internet avidly with high speed con-
nectivity, another 5-10% struggles to get access in public places or with
low bandwidth home connections, and 80% don’t use it at all (Spence
and Straubhaar, forthcoming). Most use it with only partial understand-
ing of the tools, frequently frustrated by connectivity. So, many de-
veloping country elite users come forth and join the global archipelago
described earlier but many more in their populations are excluded. Many
don’t even know they are excluded.
There is yet another world in most of Africa, and much of Asia,
the Arab World and Latin America, where almost all people are excluded
but there is a very small globalized elite of new media users in certain
companies, parts of some urban areas, and a few NGOs and educational
institutions. This world excludes 90% or more of all potential users of
both the Internet and other new media like satellite TV or cable TV.
There is another pattern that splits Internet use from in satellite
and cable TV, especially in some countries like India and much of the
Middle East. While the Internet remains restricted, satellite and/or cable
TV have become truly mass media in some countries, like India (Sinclair
2005). Structural changes have been made within satellite and cable TV

32
to reduce prices so that cable in a major Indian city may cost under five
dollars a month. In most of these situations, however, a parallel struc-
tural change has been made to focus on regional, translocal, geocultural
or transnational channels that target the population in question with its
own culture (Kumar 2006). Major efforts have been made to localize or
regionalize satellite and cable TV, challenging another aspect of its as-
sumed globalization.
The really existing uses of satellite technology
The existing uses of satellite TV technology are very plural: global,
transnational, translocal, and national. There are a number of global
channels, as we shall se below, but most of them are adapted, at least
minimally, to targeted regions and nations.
There are some truly global satellite and cable TV channels, such
as CNN, MTV, HBO, ESPN, Discover, Disney, BBC, Nickelodeon and
Cartoon Channel. However, we need to understand exactly how these
are structured and exactly how they operate. Some, like HBO, remain
highly centralized with regional offices making a selection among Ameri-
can material to figure out what would be most regionally appropriate
and would not affect local sensibilities. So that a Singapore office of
HBO seems to exercise some degree of choice and moral censorship over
what’s available on the HBO broadcast into Singapore, Malaysia and its
region, but it is still a very globalized channel. On the other hand, some
global icons like MTV have gained extensive popularity and commer-
cial success precisely by localizing its genre forms of video clip, VJ, and
youth-oriented reality shows into national and regional versions. The
tendency seems to be in the latter direction.
Nearly all-global channels have done the minimal localization of
translation and dubbing. Those that do not so extensively, like CNN,
remain locked in small, if elite, parts of the English language archipelago,
with very small audiences by TV standards, as Colin Sparks (1998) and
others have noted. Some popular specialty channels do a little more than
dubbing, such as Discovery and Cartoon Channel. They do local cul-
ture based transitions, promotions, and appeals to draw local audiences
towards what remains largely globalized programming (Chalaby 2005).
These channels are most popular among specific niches, such as educa-

33
tionally aspiring middle classes or children, as we shall see below. Many
channels, particularly in music, sports, news, television drama, etc. find
they have to localize more in order to compete effectively with more cul-
turally specific transnational and national channels. There is a tendency
for such channels to first regionalize and then focus increasingly on na-
tional situations that require more specificity in order to achieve a decent
audience to become profitable (Curtin, forthcoming).
The example of Murdoch in Asia is interesting. He initially tried to
cover all of Asia with five television channels: MTV Asia, a BBC chan-
nel, Prime Sports out of Denver, Star Plus entertainment and culture,
and a single Mandarin language channel. He rapidly discovered that he
had to go to much more national and now has over 50 channels aimed
at various specific places, specific culture regions and nations with vari-
ous specific lineups. He is continuing to subdivide and localize further
everyday.
Some of the fiercest competition for Murdoch and other would-be
global titans comes from new transnational channels that work within
cultural spaces or markets, defined by language and culture. Many of
these are geo-cultural. They work within culture and language defined
spaces of contiguous nations that share not only languages but pre-
colonial cultural and historical commonalities, in areas such as Greater
China or the Arab World, or colonial common languages and histories,
such as Latin America. Some are transnational cultural-linguistic spaces,
such as the English- or Portuguese- speaking cultural spaces or markets,
spread across the globe but unified by colonial languages, shared histo-
ries, and often by new post-colonial cultural exporters, like the USA in
the Anglophone world, or Brazil in the Lusophone world. Networks tar-
geting these more specific cultural spaces seem have an advantage, which
we cover more below, over more global, but also more culturally distant
broadcasters. Al-Jazeera beats CNN so completely in the Arab World in
part by the cultural specificity or proximity of its news approach, framed
within a more specific set of commonly held values and traditions.
Other strong competitors to global corporations are either national
or translocal. In India, there are a number of translocal (targeting the local
or national from outside it) commercial India-oriented satellite channels
that come in from outside India. There are increasing numbers of local

34
and regional channels, based out of the pre-existing local and regional film
industries. These show both the existing stocks of films from regional lan-
guage film industries and also create new television programs in regional
Indian languages (Kumar 2006). So while the technology of satellite TV
has spread out in the 1990s into a number of places, in many cases it has
been used for rather traditional purposes to break open an existing broad-
cast television monopoly, as in India, Turkey or Iran (Semati 2006) or oth-
er places where government control over national television remains quite
strong. In these instances, a new phenomenon of trans-local TV is arisen,
which permits those who wish to reach those cultures markets and polities
to do so via satellite TV from outside (Kumar, 2006). On the other hand,
satellite TV content is not what one would have anticipated as global from
the U.N. debates in the 1960s or 1970s on satellites (Katz 1977). It seems
pretty much organized within cultures and languages already known to
people. It is frequently marketing goods, ideas, or even religions or politi-
cal parties that they’re already quite familiar. In some ways these are alter-
native national or regional channels using satellite or cable technology to
come in from outside, much more translocal than global.
Many of these same channels also target diasporic populations in a
truly global way. Both translocal “national” and regional language chan-
nels from India follow migrants to North America, Europe, the Middle
East and elsewhere. Some national channels, like Chinese Central TV
in English, or transnational versions of geo-cultural channels, like Al-
Jazeera in English, now intend to grow from a specific national or re-
gional base to more global roles and to an audience beyond the ones
constituted by migrants from their regions.
However, an even earlier and perhaps even more widespread use of
satellite TV in many places, starting with India, the Soviet Union and
the United States, was simply to use the satellite to bring new channels
internally to the entire national polity or market. Most of the people
in small town or rural Brazil who watch television do so via a signal
carried from a satellite transmitter and rebroadcast in their small town
or rural area. These retransmitters may have been put up by a national
network, by local advertisers, or most likely, by a mayor who saw bring-
ing national television to town as a strong benefit to his electorate (and a
good way to get re-elected). In many ways, satellite dishes coupled with

35
re-transmitters were indeed public works programs in many parts of the
world from the 1980s and 1990s into the 2000s (Straubhaar, 2007).
So much satellite use harks back conceptually and technologically to an
earlier day of communications development programs when satellite TV
was widely promoted in many large developing countries or even large
industrializing countries like the United States and the Soviet Union as
ideal ways to reach the entire populace with a signal (McAnany 1987).
Globalization and class among audiences/users
Another layer to add to the discussion of multi-layered television
and new media is to think about its audience, not so much in the linguis-
tic or cultural geographic terms that we’ve been speaking about above,
but to think about global cultural layers or segments in class terms. At
one level, we have the super connected elite of the global media archi-
pelago described above. At the other extreme, in rural parts of Africa
and South Asia, there are many people who can barely afford radio or
are scarcely covered by very many channels in it (Souto 2005). In terms
of global elites, the very best educated and connected, the most likely
to speak English and have a strong cultural capital knowledge of global
politics and events, are probably major consumers of many globalized
channels and spaces, both on satellite/cable TV and the Internet.
Probably the smallest and most elite audiences are for the global
news channels, CNN, the BBC, and new would-be global news channel
from CCTV (China) or Al-Jazeera. CNN and BBC target political and
intellectual elites. That they reach very important groups is true, often
important elites in terms of their economic and political importance,
but not particularly massive audiences. From my own interviewing in
Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and various social groups and language
groups in Texas, I have observed that the cultural capital as well as the
English ability required to actually knowledgeably and enjoyably watch
BBC or CNN news on satellite TV or cable is considerable, and rare.
For example, in Santo Domingo, in 1987, several people initially told
me that CNN was one of the reasons they got cable TV, but on closer
examination, almost none of them watched it with any regularity. So
even though the idea may interest people, very few people actually have
the ability to sustain watching them over time.

36
Certain other channels with global ambitions have also aimed at
liberally educated and wealthier audiences within various nations who
have the English-language ability (for those channels that do not yet
dub their programming) and the cultural capital and knowledge of the
look to find their programming interesting. I interviewed an entrepre-
neur in Brazil in the late 1980s, who intended to start an American
talk show channel in Latin America with shows like Oprah or Phil
Donahue. I asked her if she thought she had a big enough target audi-
ence to actually make money with across Latin America, people who
would know enough to be interested in Opera and Phil Donahue? She
was sure she had lots of friends across Latin America who spent quite
a bit of time in the USA, who knew English very well, traveled to the
U.S. several times a year, etc. What she didn’t realize was that even for
a regional television channel aimed at a market seemingly as broad as
Latin America, she was targeting a very narrow, class-defined group of
people. There simply probably weren’t enough such people to justify
such a satellite channel and, in fact, her channel went bankrupt within
a couple of years.
Other channels do successfully target global middle and upper
middle classes. It seems that HBO and a certain number of other chan-
nels reach middle classes and a certain number of cultural elites who are
exceptionally interested in American or European film and television.
The initial focus for satellite television by Editora Abril in Brazil in the
late 1980s was to provide foreign channels in a variety of languages to
former immigrants and their descendents. However, that audience base
was very restricted and marginally profitable. So Abril’s system was ul-
timately sold to its competitor, Murdoch. Interviewing people in the
management for HBO in Brazil, Singapore and other regions, I find that
with their target audience seems to be people who are cinema fans, not
necessarily extraordinary movie collectors, but still people who spend a
great deal of their time watching movies, who have the cultural capital
and interest to watch a great deal of American film. From my own in-
terviews with cable audiences in Brazil, 1989-2006, this group extends
much further into the middle class than does CNN’s audience, which
makes it more viable as a commercial enterprise and also more likely to
have considerable cultural reach and impact.

37
One of the more interesting genres to rise out of international
and global satellite television and cable television is that of the broadly
educational, but primarily entertaining documentary: Discovery Chan-
nel, Animal Planet, National Geographic, etc. From studies that I have
seen in Brazil and elsewhere these seem to reach primarily out to middle
classes, or those who aspire to be middle class (Straubhaar 2003), who
want to watch something entertaining but also something educational.
Interviewing some of the regional management of Discovery Channel in
Singapore in 2006, asking them about their balance between entertain-
ment and education, they said that they specifically avoid calling their
programming educational, not wanting to make it seem forbidding or
uninteresting. They particularly push a combination of sort of good for
you, sort of educational, but clearly entertaining and interesting materi-
al. This seems to be the adaptation of a documentary genre that national
public service television networks had originally created, now broken
down into an animal documentary genre, a nature documentary genre, a
historical documentary genre, etc. All these genres have been around for
a great deal of time, but Discovery Channel seems to have taken them
to a more globally diverse, somewhat less nationally specific audience
by making them broader and more entertaining. Talking to producers
and managers of Discovery in Asia and Latin America, I have found that
they are actively aware of the need to blend entertainment value and
educational value to the audiences. This has resulted in tremendous
global success for Discovery Channel and a proliferation of even more
specific documentary channels, particularly in countries in Asia, Latin
America, and elsewhere, which did not have the kind of national public
service channels that had done such programs in Japan, North America,
and Europe (Chris 2002). Private broadcasters have even brought these
new kinds of global entertainment documentaries into Nordic countries,
like Finland, where they offer an entertaining way to compete with the
more serious documentaries done by public service broadcasters (Hu-
janen 2007).
Audience studies seem to reflect the same sense of the global doc-
umentary genre. For example, one of the first studies of slum dwelling
audiences for cable TV in the Rio de Janeiro slum of Rocinha, found
that parents there were particularly interested in programming that

38
would keep their kids entertained and safe off the streets, since in their
neighborhood the streets was frequently dangerous, with gun battles
between drug dealers and police. So the preferred cable channels and
genres in that neighborhood were cartoons and entertaining documen-
taries from Discovery, Animal Planet, etc., which kept kids happily
indoors (Letalien 2002).
In contrast to the very global flow of documentaries, MTV is a
global satellite TV brand that seems to have succeeded by localizing ex-
tensively. It kept core elements of its formula, a focus on youth with a va-
riety of genres of music videos and other kinds of programming, and VJs
(video-jockeys) or announcers who adapt MTV styles to local aesthetics
(Chalaby 2002). In Brazil, in the operation I studied most intensely, the
initial MTV target in the late 1980s was middle-class and upper-middle-
class youth (Flesch 1990). MTV in Brazil initially imagined an audience
that would consume the sorts of things that were shown in the videos
from the United States, and would have a very direct particular interest
in music videos from United States. The producers and researchers for
MTV Brazil I interviewed in 1989 and subsequently were very aware of
that this was not the majority of Brazilian youth (MTV 1997). Most
Brazilian youth would prefer to have seen a higher proportion of Bra-
zilian music videos and fewer American heavy metal and other 1980s
U.S.-style videos. However, they were cautious, initially building on the
videos they already had from the USA, not wanting to encourage the
cost of having a to record new videos, which weren’t yet being produced
already in Brazil by the music industry in the same way that they were in
the United States. So they started with a more cautious mixture of U.S.
and Brazilian music videos and appealed to the youth who liked that
mixture, upper-class youth with more previous exposure to U.S. culture.
As they began to broaden their ambitions to try to reach a broader range
of Brazilian youth, they increased the proportion of Brazilian music vid-
eos, locally-based interview segments and lifestyle segments etc.
A multi-layered Internet
The Internet seems to run an extreme range of cultural geographic
and other layers of production and identification from very global to very
local, much more than broadcast television, satellite television or film.

39
Many people worldwide do use global sites in English, such as the New
York Times, Wikipedia, software sites, and games. User registration for
the New York Times shows hundreds of thousands of users outside the
USA, for example. UNESCO was concerned enough about the domi-
nance of English (and a few other major languages) on the Internet to
address the issue of linguistic diversity on the Internet in their Con-
vention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural
Expressions (Unesco 2005) and in subsequent action programs (c.f.
UNESCO Information Society Observatory weekly email bulletins).
However, increasingly, more people seem to use language specific
sites and services. For example, the English-language version of Wiki-
pedia is popular, drawing hundreds of thousands of global users. What
are accelerating even faster, however, are increasing numbers of language
versions of Wikipedia. As of August 2007, there are 174 language ver-
sions of Wikipedia that have over 100 articles in each as of 2006. Show-
ing some level of concentration in major world languages, 12 language
versions of Wikipedia have over 100 thousand entries each (Wikipedia,
2007). Electronic mail, social networking programs, and other new Web
2.0 (or more intensely participatory and interactive Internet uses) tend
to function within language groups, within social classes, within reli-
gious or other groups. For example, a recent study in the USA shows
that even within the seemingly somewhat homogenized U. S. youth cul-
ture of the Internet, Facebook social networking program users tend to
be somewhat better educated, whiter, more elite, and more college ori-
ented than MySpace users (Boyd 2007) . The latter tended to be more
working class, more ethnically diverse.
In many cases, many national media Web sites are far more widely
used than global media Web sites. Oh My News from Korea, for in-
stance, is one of the world’s most heavily used new sites, even though
it functions primarily in the Korean language primarily serving a very
large and growing base of Korea news users. Likewise in Latin America
and other parts of Asia or Europe, national media sites tend to be some-
what more widely used for actual news purposes than global media sites,
which tend to be more likely used for entertainment or other purposes.
In Europe, national public service broadcasters’ Web sites are often the
most heavily used (Hujanen 2007). In some ways, this reflects the trust

40
created by national “brands” of media, often specifically public media,
but often, too, private national newspapers. It also relates to the social,
cultural and other capital demands made on a user or reader of news
(Bourdieu 1986). For someone to knowledgeably read and use the New
York Times website for news articles on a regular basis requires intense
cultural capital. More than basic knowledge of English, far more than
basic knowledge of U.S. and world events, further into U.S. specialized
vocabulary, phrases and usages are required for someone to use a new
service like the New York Times more than occasionally. If one is to be
a regular intensive user, one needs to have the cultural capital required
make that both easy and pleasurable.
In fact among the rapidly growing U.S. online news spaces, the
most popular spaces are those of extremely localized news portals and
services, according to multiple reports at the Eighth Annual Internation-
al Symposium on Online Journalism, March 30-31, 2007 at the Univer-
sity of Texas in Austin (http://journalism.utexas.edu/onlinejournalism/).
New services for and about specific neighborhoods, small cities, parts
of larger cities like the San Fernando Valley part of Los Angeles, for
example, all seem to draw intense, frequent news usage, perhaps when
cumulated, more than do larger more cosmopolitan more global sites
like the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. This reinforces our
point about the continuing importance of local identity.
Transnational complex
We need to look more deeply at some of the driving forces be-
hind the growth of complex transnational layers of production, flow and
identification. These include the major regional and global diasporic
languages, and cultural linguistic markets, both transnational and geo-
cultural, discussed above. They also include the flow and adaptation of
capitalist models, global, transnational or regional, and in one key, re-
lated development, the growth of major media capitals (Curtin 2003) or
production metropoles, and global cities (Sassen 2004).
In many parts of the world, there is a truly globalized capitalism.
We see it both at basic level of basic economic forms on into specific
media genre forms. It carries with it important cultural forms such as
the form of modern American network style of commercial television, or

41
the form of the commercialized music video, or the form of the Western
professionalized news story. There are, however, also many regional, na-
tional and even local variations. For example, past a very basic level of
capitalism itself, is there a single model for the sort of modern or capital-
ist modernity that many countries throughout the world now pursue?
Or are there Japanese and Chinese models of capitalist media modernity,
as suggested by Iwabuchi (2002) or David Harvey (2005), which now
serve as models for other places in Asia, Latin America, etc. Those may
be models that are more approachable and seemingly more realistic than
the American, British or French models.
For an interesting example, of over half a century of life now,
we can look at the forms of Latin American commercial television
broadcasting and, in particular, the way they have produced their most
famous product, the telenovela. There, perhaps earlier than anyplace
else in the world, we can see the impact of the forms of U.S. style
commercial network broadcasting which have proven so influential in
the 1980s and 1990s in places like Europe. Those forms and models
landed with full force much earlier in Latin America, with radio in
the 1920s and with television already in the 1950s. So already by the
1930s, we saw modern American corporations used to a certain style of
highly networked and highly commercialized broadcasting, which they
were accustomed to use for selling their products, beginning to use and
adapt the same forms to Latin America.
To take a very specific case, Colgate-Palmolive, the major U.S. multi-
national soap company, helped develop a specific American form of melo-
drama that we called soap opera in the United States. They quickly moved
it to Cuba, the most developed Latin American market, first in radio in the
1930s and then in television in the 1950s, and it spread quickly through-
out Latin America. That seems straightforward as a preview of top down
capitalist globalization of media and culture, but we look more closely, we
actually see a much more complex process. A combination of genre tradi-
tions, television industry structures, television producers, and television
audiences produced the Latin American telenovela, as a distinct variation
on the rather globally dispersed notion of the melodrama, of which the
U.S. soap opera is just one notably successful variation. Producers, first in
Cuba, then elsewhere in Latin America drew on European serial novel tra-

42
ditions, American radio and television soaps, Cuban and other early Latin
American adaptations of those genres, and emerging local and national
cultural traditions that lent themselves to melodrama on television (Lopez
1995; La Pastina, Rego et al. 2003).
Audience response ensured that advertisers would supply the eco-
nomic resources for continued and expanded production of telenove-
las in an increasing number of countries. Audience feedback shaped
the productions away from elite focused dramas toward a mass culture
form that resonated more with a variety of traditions and plot devices
and that could involve both men and women, peasants, urban workers,
and the middle classes (Martín-Barbero, 1993). This cultural forma-
tion spread all over Latin America, with distinct adaptations variations,
so that Brazilian telenovelas are quite different from those of Mexico
(Hernandez, 2001).
In one of life’s little ironies, probably Fidel Castro did not con-
sciously intend to accelerate and consolidate the commercial American
network form of television in the rest of Latin America when he pushed
so many commercial media professionals out of Cuba in 1959. But that
was exactly what happened when many highly trained scriptwriters, di-
rectors, network managers, network owners, actors and technicians left
Cuba for Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Peru. These profes-
sionals had their own notions of how to supply the American network
model and certain genres like the variety show and telenovela. It was
based on the Cuban experience, reflecting the American experience, but
quickly developed a number of variations to fit the general Latin Ameri-
can market as well as specific places they worked. They took literally
hundreds of thousands of pages of scripts and other concrete formulas
that permitted them to move their knowledge with them rather quick-
ly and rather effectively, not unlike the rapid, massive spread of reality
shows in the last 10-15 years.
One of my current projects is doing an oral history with Joe Wal-
lach, one of the lead professionals from Time life Inc. who in 1965 went
to Brazil to begin a joint venture with Roberto Marinho, the owner of
O Globo newspaper and several radio stations, who wished to get into
television. I find that he was aware of both the advantages and disad-
vantages, strengths and weaknesses of an American television model as

43
it was taken to Latin America. He realized that certain things about the
American model, particularly its financial forms, network simulcasting,
and central management would seemingly work well in Brazil, but he
also recognized very quickly by the end of 1965 that some of his U.S.
colleagues’ ideas about how to program television, principally import-
ing a lot of American programming, would not work. It simply wasn’t
going to make money. The Time Life TV Globo station was in fourth
place out of four in Rio. So he went looking for Brazilian professionals
who could bring local programming approaches, which would be more
popular with Brazilians. Here is a very early example of how even major
pillars of international capitalism recognized the need to localize their
strategies and adapt to local forms of capitalist development and of cul-
tural definition of markets. So a key thing that we see in the evolution
of current capitalist modernities is the adaptation of these models. This
was visible early in Latin America, but also recently in east Asia South
Asia, the Arab world and various parts of Europe, to the cultural lin-
guistic and geocultural regions that both local and transnational cultural
industries encountered.
We also see the growth of major production centers, media capitals
(Curtin 2003) or global production cities. They include Rio de Janeiro,
Mexico City, and Miami (Sinclair 2003) for Latin America, Hong Kong
and Shanghai as major production centers in China, for much of Asia,
Beirut and Cairo in the Arab World, etc. These centers have an increas-
ingly global projection, but their real base has been and continues to be
transnational geo-cultural and cultural linguistic markets.
Multiple identifications, identity and hybridity
There is an ongoing, complex interaction between forces of eco-
nomics and technology, as exemplified by many of the satellite television
services, broadcast television networks, and Internet companies or insti-
tutions discussed above, and long run patterns of culture and language.
To some very large degree, people in audiences come to identify with
what they are shown. The extraordinary dominance of global film dis-
tribution by the USA since the 1920s has resulted in cultural patterns of
familiarity, knowledge and liking for American style films that persists
in many parts of the world (Miller 2001). That creates a market defined

44
by both political economy and culture that new networks of feature and
documentary film, like HBO or Discovery, can exploit, using new tech-
nologies of television distribution. Those supply and reinforce the audi-
ences of those who like those genres. So for large numbers of people,
a specific identification with Hollywood style film builds up to where
there is a layer of culture so familiar to people that Gitlin called this
American cultural layer of production, flow and consumption, a familiar
second culture for many people in the world (Gitlin 2001).
To take a very different example, the historical primacy of public
service broadcasting over time in the Nordic countries and its ongo-
ing creation of genres and forms of content that engage and please its
audience has created patterns of goodwill, familiarity, cultural capital
or knowledge, and liking that continues to guide audience preferenc-
es toward it even when competition is available. From the continued
ratings success of such cultural and informational genres in the face of
both broadcast and satellite/cable multi-channel TV competition, many
Scandinavians seem to have ongoing identification with them that could
be seen as fairly stable cultural layers of production, programming and
consumption for both informational and cultural forms typically identi-
fied with public service broadcasting. To some degree, these forms are
identified with national culture and also continue to connect with and
reinforce a layer of what might be seen as national identity in a country
like Denmark (Søndergaard 2003).
The creation of a certain linguistic or cultural space or market is
intertwined with economic and technological forces. In his study of the
development of nationalism, Anderson saw print capitalism as work
with existing languages or dialects to standardize and spread them, via
the printed word of newspapers, novels, etc. to become standardized na-
tional languages (Anderson 1983). In his work on modern India, Kumar
(2006) shows how Hindi has been both spread and resisted as a national
language within India by different institutions of television, at both na-
tional and regional levels. By providing ongoing news and culture for
people to identify with, a number of these broadcasters, at the level of
region or province within India have served to reinforce regional senses
of identity, which were already based on earlier forms of language and
culture, before television, radio or film.

45
So the interaction is indeed complex. Audience identification and
more aggregated senses of cultural identity change with media forms.
Culture is not static. Audience senses of identification can increase as
forms of media bring them new and compelling cultural forms to iden-
tify with. This is one of the ways that layers of cultural production, flow
and identification can increase, reaching the multiple layers presented
earlier in this article.
However, ongoing, changing forms of culture (and language) also
defines spaces and markets within which use of technologies and orienta-
tions of media institutions and businesses is defined. For example, there
was a point in the history of television broadcasting in Italy, where some-
what surprisingly large audiences existed for Latin American telenovelas.
As channels increased, seeking for new material to program, program-
mers experimented with the telenovelas and they struck a resonance or
identification with parts of the audience to where European scholars be-
gan to debate whether counter-flow from the developing to developed
nations might be underway (Biltereyst and Meers 2000). However, an
underlying preference for locally produced versions of popular television
forms could also be seen or anticipated (Straubhaar 1991) and Italian
fiction production began to increase, proving profitable, and pushed the
telenovelas slowly out of the main parts of the national programming
schedule (Buonanno 2004). Still for some parts of the Italian audience,
particularly in southern Italy, where many felt more linked with emigra-
tion and family ties to countries like Argentina and Brazil, an identifica-
tion with and liking for such programs continues (Del Negro 2003).
These identifications with specific programs again reflect the growth of
multiple layers of both identification and identity. These are not essen-
tialized or reified, but must be seen in a steadily changing media and cul-
tural environment where technologies, television institutions, program
forms and audience identification and identity evolve together.
This ongoing pattern of change can be seen as both hybridity and
the multiplication of layers of production, programming/flow, and iden-
tification. The hybridity can be seen in ongoing cultural change through
the contact of local, regional, national, transnational and global ele-
ments, liked those discussed earlier. Layers of cultural production and
identification multiply as technological and economic forces allow.

46
To people I have interviewed in Texas and in Brazil, many of these layers
of culture that are made available to them and with which they come to
identify, seem very solid, not something they anticipate changing. Latino
immigrants to Texas that I have interviewed, as well as Turkish immi-
grants to western Europe interviewed in research by Ogan (1998), show
that many immigrants welcome a certain continuity of culture to be
found in television from back home. They cherish that layer of culture
and identification, even as they form others in their new environment.
However, these layers of cultural production and flow evolve with
technological and economic possibilities. Affordable satellite television
channels make it much easier for transnational immigrants to stay more
closely involved and identified with their home culture. (Earlier waves of
immigrants had fewer media options and were more likely to have to use
media in their new hosts countries, if they wanted to use media.)They also
evolve with changing, or hybridizing forms of culture, that both reflect
and frame the technological and economic possibilities. So as television
becomes cheaper, and people also start creating their own cultural forums
on websites, we see the growth of Persian language television production
in Los Angeles for Iranian immigrants there (Naficy 1993). We see even
larger numbers of websites, web radio programs, and even specialized satel-
lite TV channels for South Asian immigrants to the USA or Great Britain,
some focused on events back in South Asia, many focused directly on the
immigrant experience and news of their own specific community (MAL-
LAPRAGADA 2006). These examples show the reciprocity of economic,
technology, culture and media channels. People move in large numbers
mostly for economic reasons, although political, familial, religious and
other reasons factor in as well (Papastergiadis 2000). As they move, they
take their culturally formed interests with them. That creates spaces or
markets for new layers of media to act in, if economic and technological
possibilities allow. All of these ultimately tend to create a new layer of
production, experience and reception, that is media, identification and
identity specific to the new immigrant community and its culture. That
community and culture will represent both a hybridization of home and
host cultures, and a new layer of media and culture in itself.
So, to conclude, this article looks at four bodies of issues and theo-
ry. First, we see the elaboration and development of new multiple layers

47
of media production, flow, identification and, perhaps, eventually, iden-
tity. Second, these form in reciprocal interaction between technological
possibilities, political-economic forces such as movement of peoples and
expansion of media institutions and companies, and spaces for media
created by the cultural identities and interests of concrete groups of peo-
ple. The net effect of this has been the expansion of layers of production
and reception of culture at the global, U.S. export empire, transnational
cultural-linguistic, transnational geo-cultural, trans-local, national, re-
gional, global city or media capital, metropolitan and local levels.
Third, instead of the homogenization feared by earlier theorists (Hame-
link 1983), we see a less drastic but perhaps equally pervasive hybridization of
cultures. Both media institution professionals and audience members I have
interviewed tend to articulate what they see as the increase in the number of
layers or kinds of culture (often expressed as new markets by the professionals),
those layers are also constantly changing as they also interact and hybridize
over time. So, fourth, this is also a complex and dynamic system that is con-
stantly evolving or emerging (Straubhaar 2007), as culture, political-economy,
and technological possibilities interact and shape each other.
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